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Post by pablogilberto on Jun 22, 2020 6:08:17 GMT -5
Do you think that the best way to get better tones is setup the pickup height as close to the strings as possible without introducing wolf tones? or as long as the magnet is not pulling the strings?
Do you have suggestions on best practices to properly setup pickup height?
Thank you!
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Post by antigua on Jun 23, 2020 19:27:12 GMT -5
Do you think that the best way to get better tones is setup the pickup height as close to the strings as possible without introducing wolf tones? or as long as the magnet is not pulling the strings? Do you have suggestions on best practices to properly setup pickup height? Thank you! It's all preference, my goal is just to know what the difference is in a physical sense, but not describe one as better or worse. When the pickups are closer to the strings, the asymmetry results in increased harmonics, and the increase is not uniform, so the timbre changes slightly. The upward shift of harmonics means a little more mids and treble are produced relative to the fundamental. There's an overall increase in "beating", and it varies by harmonic, trending closer towards "wolf tones" which is extreme "beating". You can see the beating as ripples in this spectrogram i.imgur.com/tzxAA5t.jpg . The sound you get when the pickups are closer is a more complex and chaotic, and whether or not that's good or bad depends on the genre of music being played. |
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7thstring
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Post by 7thstring on Jul 16, 2020 8:07:46 GMT -5
Joined to say, thank you for your work antigua! I first stumbled across some of your pickup investigations in this strat-talk thread when I was searching for some info on tele pickups. Funny that there is so much backlash from the 'pickup enthusiast' community for someone performing some basic measurement and data gathering.. One might begin to think pickup manufacturers have something to hide..? |
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mb1685
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Post by mb1685 on Jul 2, 2021 9:48:08 GMT -5
Fantastic thread, can't believe I missed it before!
I've always struggled coming to terms with the "beating" that is audible from the many non-just intervals in 12-tone equal temperament (especially the major third since our ears badly want to hear it as a totally consonant interval). I've found some agreeableness through things like short and narrow frets, longer scale length and thinner strings (reduced inharmonicity), lower radius fretboards and narrower nut widths (a good match for my small hands to avoid excessive fretting pressure), and arrangement techniques like strategic choice of chord voicings and sometimes even sweetened tunings.
This experiment has me wondering if perhaps pickup height can exasperate the effect of dissonant beating (even aside from wolf tones). I know that the pitch does not change as long as the neck pickup isn't high enough to induce wolf tones, but could the modulation in amplitude have the effect of appearing to make pitch-induced beating sound more severe? Especially in the middle height range where the modulation intervals are the longest.
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Post by antigua on Jul 2, 2021 12:32:40 GMT -5
Fantastic thread, can't believe I missed it before! I've always struggled coming to terms with the "beating" that is audible from the many non-just intervals in 12-tone equal temperament (especially the major third since our ears badly want to hear it as a totally consonant interval). I've found some agreeableness through things like short and narrow frets, longer scale length and thinner strings (reduced inharmonicity), lower radius fretboards and narrower nut widths (a good match for my small hands to avoid excessive fretting pressure), and arrangement techniques like strategic choice of chord voicings and sometimes even sweetened tunings. This experiment has me wondering if perhaps pickup height can exasperate the effect of dissonant beating (even aside from wolf tones). I know that the pitch does not change as long as the neck pickup isn't high enough to induce wolf tones, but could the modulation in amplitude have the effect of appearing to make pitch-induced beating sound more severe? Especially in the middle height range where the modulation intervals are the longest. I'm not sure, but in this case the beating happens all with a single string, and I take it you're talking about string-to-string beating when a chords is played. One thing that is for certain is that even if the string is not pulled hard enough to induce audible beating, it is nevertheless being pulled to some extent. The beating is visible in the spectrograms even when it's not audible, it looks like a pulse. The low E and A will be pulled on harder than the other four strings, and they are pulled harder still when you fret the strings farther up the fret board. So if you have a neck pickup that's close to the strings, even a humbucker, the low E and A can become increasing dissonant with the rest of chord. I've not tested this the way I tested beating, but it stands to reason that it would work that way. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 6, 2022 8:56:10 GMT -5
Do you think that the best way to get better tones is setup the pickup height as close to the strings as possible without introducing wolf tones? or as long as the magnet is not pulling the strings? Do you have suggestions on best practices to properly setup pickup height? Thank you! It's all preference, my goal is just to know what the difference is in a physical sense, but not describe one as better or worse. When the pickups are closer to the strings, the asymmetry results in increased harmonics, and the increase is not uniform, so the timbre changes slightly. The upward shift of harmonics means a little more mids and treble are produced relative to the fundamental. There's an overall increase in "beating", and it varies by harmonic, trending closer towards "wolf tones" which is extreme "beating". You can see the beating as ripples in this spectrogram i.imgur.com/tzxAA5t.jpg . The sound you get when the pickups are closer is a more complex and chaotic, and whether or not that's good or bad depends on the genre of music being played.
This problem of the beating is of particular interest to me. It appears to afflict some guitars more than others, and is noticeable only when playing with distortion. For example, my Squier Stratocaster with Dimarzio pickups had it particularly bad on the 3rd string, beginning on the 7th fret upwards and becoming less apparent around the 15th fret. My RG barely has it. I recently built a Warmoth partscaster and planned to retire the Squier. I transplanted the Squier's pickguard on to the Warmoth -- same beating but not as bad, and mostly concentrated on the 3rd string, 12th to 16th/17th frets and one fret on the 2nd string. However, i bought a cheapo no-name pickguard assembly with HSS pickups and installed it in the Squier. Surprisingly this made the beating less noticeable on the Squier. One thing i must mention is that the pickup heights on all three guitars are not super close to the strings, though i can't provide exact numbers now. All pickups use ceramic magnets.
There's a long thread on Strat-talk where a user investigated this problem thoroughly by eliminating all possible variables. In the end he didn't quite fix it.
One thing i found that practically eliminates this problem is by putting an overdrive pedal in front of the distorted amp. I use a tubescreamer, so this tells me the beating might be frequency-dependent as the TS cuts bass and adds midrange. But this adds more compression than i like and i don't want to rely on a pedal.
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Post by gckelloch on Aug 6, 2022 16:41:38 GMT -5
It's all preference, my goal is just to know what the difference is in a physical sense, but not describe one as better or worse. When the pickups are closer to the strings, the asymmetry results in increased harmonics, and the increase is not uniform, so the timbre changes slightly. The upward shift of harmonics means a little more mids and treble are produced relative to the fundamental. There's an overall increase in "beating", and it varies by harmonic, trending closer towards "wolf tones" which is extreme "beating". You can see the beating as ripples in this spectrogram i.imgur.com/tzxAA5t.jpg . The sound you get when the pickups are closer is a more complex and chaotic, and whether or not that's good or bad depends on the genre of music being played. This problem of the beating is of particular interest to me. It appears to afflict some guitars more than others, and is noticeable only when playing with distortion. For example, my Squier Stratocaster with Dimarzio pickups had it particularly bad on the 3rd string, beginning on the 7th fret upwards and becoming less apparent around the 15th fret. My RG barely has it. I recently built a Warmoth partscaster and planned to retire the Squier. I transplanted the Squier's pickguard on to the Warmoth -- same beating but not as bad, and mostly concentrated on the 3rd string, 12th to 16th/17th frets and one fret on the 2nd string. However, i bought a cheapo no-name pickguard assembly with HSS pickups and installed it in the Squier. Surprisingly this made the beating less noticeable on the Squier. One thing i must mention is that the pickup heights on all three guitars are not super close to the strings, though i can't provide exact numbers now. All pickups use ceramic magnets.
There's a long thread on Strat-talk where a user investigated this problem thoroughly by eliminating all possible variables. In the end he didn't quite fix it.
One thing i found that practically eliminates this problem is by putting an overdrive pedal in front of the distorted amp. I use a tubescreamer, so this tells me the beating might be frequency-dependent as the TS cuts bass. But this adds more compression than i like and i don't want to rely on a pedal.
It's possible that some of the beating is caused by interaction with trem spring resonances. How much that is heard electrically might depend on whether the springs are magnetic, and how close they are to the pickup coils. It might be heard with some distortion, but not so with cleaner. The Graphtec saddles reduce the high end. That may have somewhat the same effect as an overdrive pedal, like a Tube Screamer, that rolls off the high end above ~700Hz. Sounds like your issue is mostly the neck pickup. It is common to set the middle and neck pickup higher than necessary. I've backed mine down more than when I started playing in the mid-70s. The idea is to have the heights essentially the same with the highest fret depressed. Generally, 3.5~4mm on the low E and ~2mm on the high E works well, depending on the pickup pole Gauss. AlNiCo V poles have much higher surface Gauss than Steel-poled Ceramic-powered pickups. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 15, 2022 9:01:15 GMT -5
antigua any ideas how one could begin to track down the root cause of the beating? I think this is a problem that many are affected by yet don't know it, and i suspect many people would rather blame "bad" pickups for causing it. Could it be related to the resonant frequency?
ADD: I know you mentioned elsewhere that dual resonances in pickups do not exist, but in the same post you also mentioned that maybe our measurement and testing methods are not able to pick them up (pun not intended). What if the beating is a result of 2 resonant frequencies clashing? Especially if they're close to each other and/or the frequency of the note being played? All my Dimarzios (which are "dual resonance" models) exhibit the beating more than the other pickups i have, which are not Dimarzios and which i assume are not "dual resonance." Just one theory i could think of.
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Post by antigua on Aug 16, 2022 2:19:21 GMT -5
antigua any ideas how one could begin to track down the root cause of the beating? I think this is a problem that many are affected by yet don't know it, and i suspect many people would rather blame "bad" pickups for causing it. Could it be related to the resonant frequency?
ADD: I know you mentioned elsewhere that dual resonances in pickups do not exist, but in the same post you also mentioned that maybe our measurement and testing methods are not able to pick them up (pun not intended). What if the beating is a result of 2 resonant frequencies clashing? Especially if they're close to each other and/or the frequency of the note being played? All my Dimarzios (which are "dual resonance" models) exhibit the beating more than the other pickups i have, which are not Dimarzios and which i assume are not "dual resonance." Just one theory i could think of.
Beating due to magnetic pull on the guitar string is caused as a result of it causing an asymmetry in the string, one half of the string is under higher tension than the other as a result of the magnetic pull, and as a result the guitar string vibrates at two different frequencies that are only a few hertz apart, and that result in beating. I recorded the effect and displayed it in a spectrogram a few years ago www.strat-talk.com/threads/analyzing-the-wolf-tone-effect-in-a-spectrogram.449200/ If you play two of the same notes on the guitar, one out of tune, like if you play both the fifth fret of the low E string, and an open A, and you bend the E string out of tune slightly, you hear the same sort of beating sound as is caused by magnetic pull. As for a dual resonance that an exciter coil and bode plotter doesn't pick up, I'm not sure what the context is. In the sense that the pickup is an RLC circuit, the exciter models that fairly completely, the exciter "interferes" with the inductance of the pickup only ever so slightly, and it doesn't interfere with the resistance or the capacitance at all, so what you see is what you get. The guitar itself has resonances, like "dead spots" at certain frets, but the amplitudes of those peaks and valleys are really small in the electrified output, and if they weren't small, you'd be able to hear the difference when you touched a guitar to something solid, like a wall or the table, which will changes those resonances. The sound you hear with your ears is obvious, but though the pickups and the guitar amp, not so much. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 16, 2022 9:31:30 GMT -5
antigua any ideas how one could begin to track down the root cause of the beating? I think this is a problem that many are affected by yet don't know it, and i suspect many people would rather blame "bad" pickups for causing it. Could it be related to the resonant frequency?
ADD: I know you mentioned elsewhere that dual resonances in pickups do not exist, but in the same post you also mentioned that maybe our measurement and testing methods are not able to pick them up (pun not intended). What if the beating is a result of 2 resonant frequencies clashing? Especially if they're close to each other and/or the frequency of the note being played? All my Dimarzios (which are "dual resonance" models) exhibit the beating more than the other pickups i have, which are not Dimarzios and which i assume are not "dual resonance." Just one theory i could think of.
Beating due to magnetic pull on the guitar string is caused as a result of it causing an asymmetry in the string, one half of the string is under higher tension than the other as a result of the magnetic pull, and as a result the guitar string vibrates at two different frequencies that are only a few hertz apart, and that result in beating. I recorded the effect and displayed it in a spectrogram a few years ago www.strat-talk.com/threads/analyzing-the-wolf-tone-effect-in-a-spectrogram.449200/ If you play two of the same notes on the guitar, one out of tune, like if you play both the fifth fret of the low E string, and an open A, and you bend the E string out of tune slightly, you hear the same sort of beating sound as is caused by magnetic pull. As for a dual resonance that an exciter coil and bode plotter doesn't pick up, I'm not sure what the context is. In the sense that the pickup is an RLC circuit, the exciter models that fairly completely, the exciter "interferes" with the inductance of the pickup only ever so slightly, and it doesn't interfere with the resistance or the capacitance at all, so what you see is what you get. The guitar itself has resonances, like "dead spots" at certain frets, but the amplitudes of those peaks and valleys are really small in the electrified output, and if they weren't small, you'd be able to hear the difference when you touched a guitar to something solid, like a wall or the table, which will changes those resonances. The sound you hear with your ears is obvious, but though the pickups and the guitar amp, not so much.
Thank you for taking the time to respond, antigua. I always appreciate your sharing your knowledge and expertise.
I can see how magnet pull can affect the vibration of the strings when the pickups with magnetic polepieces are set high enough, but what about instances where the pickups have been lowered so as to be flush with the pickguard, as in the Strat-talk thread i linked to? Or when humbuckers with ceramics that are under the bobbins are used? Your HH Tele test didn't show any pulsing in the spectogram. Would you attribute beating in these situations to the resonances in the guitar's neck and body, etc.? To be honest i don't think i fully understood your third paragraph, i'm sorry.
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Post by antigua on Aug 16, 2022 16:42:04 GMT -5
Thank you for taking the time to respond, antigua. I always appreciate your sharing your knowledge and expertise.
I can see how magnet pull can affect the vibration of the strings when the pickups with magnetic polepieces are set high enough, but what about instances where the pickups have been lowered so as to be flush with the pickguard, as in the Strat-talk thread i linked to? Or when humbuckers with ceramics that are under the bobbins are used? Your HH Tele test didn't show any pulsing in the spectogram. Would you attribute beating in these situations to the resonances in the guitar's neck and body, etc.? To be honest i don't think i fully understood your third paragraph, i'm sorry.
Oh, I didn't see that thread. When the pickups are that low, it's not at all likely that they have anything to do with it. If the saddle was loose, it would cause asymmetrical damping at one end of the string, or if the action is really low the guitar string might buzz the top of a fret, causing an asymmetrical vibration. It must be something mechanical. |
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Post by roadtonever on Aug 17, 2022 2:44:26 GMT -5
Oh, I didn't see that thread. When the pickups are that low, it's not at all likely that they have anything to do with it. If the saddle was loose, it would cause asymmetrical damping at one end of the string, or if the action is really low the guitar string might buzz the top of a fret, causing an asymmetrical vibration. It must be something mechanical. One of the reasons why I appreciate bridge designs that lock down the saddles. |
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Post by aquin43 on Aug 17, 2022 3:35:55 GMT -5
It seems that single strings can produce a beat all by themselves and the problem is well known on pianos. It is possibly connected with the effective bridge stiffness being different perpendicular and parallel to the soundboard.
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 17, 2022 20:59:21 GMT -5
Oh, I didn't see that thread. When the pickups are that low, it's not at all likely that they have anything to do with it. If the saddle was loose, it would cause asymmetrical damping at one end of the string, or if the action is really low the guitar string might buzz the top of a fret, causing an asymmetrical vibration. It must be something mechanical. One of the reasons why I appreciate bridge designs that lock down the saddles.
Shouldn't the downforce from string tension hold the saddles down tight?
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Post by gckelloch on Aug 17, 2022 23:02:39 GMT -5
Have you tried damping the trem springs with a cloth or foam?
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 18, 2022 5:02:46 GMT -5
Have you tried damping the trem springs with a cloth or foam?
On my Squier Strat, yes. Didn't help one bit. My Warmoth has a fixed bridge.
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Post by antigua on Aug 18, 2022 13:42:40 GMT -5
One of the reasons why I appreciate bridge designs that lock down the saddles.
Shouldn't the downforce from string tension hold the saddles down tight?
Sometimes when people adjust the two height grub screws on the six independent saddles, the saddle might be standing on one screw, and the other not fully in contact with the base plate. So if the saddle is floating on one screw, and is also light in weight, like I imagine a graphite saddle would be, it will vibrate as the moving string oscillates against it, in a sense becoming part of the guitar string, and creating an asymmetrical system of energy dissipation. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 22, 2022 3:06:22 GMT -5
Thank you for taking the time to respond, antigua. I always appreciate your sharing your knowledge and expertise.
I can see how magnet pull can affect the vibration of the strings when the pickups with magnetic polepieces are set high enough, but what about instances where the pickups have been lowered so as to be flush with the pickguard, as in the Strat-talk thread i linked to? Or when humbuckers with ceramics that are under the bobbins are used? Your HH Tele test didn't show any pulsing in the spectogram. Would you attribute beating in these situations to the resonances in the guitar's neck and body, etc.? To be honest i don't think i fully understood your third paragraph, i'm sorry.
Oh, I didn't see that thread. When the pickups are that low, it's not at all likely that they have anything to do with it. If the saddle was loose, it would cause asymmetrical damping at one end of the string, or if the action is really low the guitar string might buzz the top of a fret, causing an asymmetrical vibration. It must be something mechanical.
And i didn't see this response! 
The poster in the Strat-talk thread was very thorough and eliminated practically every variable. It didn't seem to be mechanical in his case.
What confuses me still is that, if it is purely caused by magnetic pull, then why is the beating emphasized on certain guitars while practically non-existent on others.
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Post by antigua on Aug 22, 2022 14:30:57 GMT -5
Oh, I didn't see that thread. When the pickups are that low, it's not at all likely that they have anything to do with it. If the saddle was loose, it would cause asymmetrical damping at one end of the string, or if the action is really low the guitar string might buzz the top of a fret, causing an asymmetrical vibration. It must be something mechanical.
And i didn't see this response!
The poster in the Strat-talk thread was very thorough and eliminated practically every variable. It didn't seem to be mechanical in his case.
What confuses me still is that, if it is purely caused by magnetic pull, then why is the beating emphasized on certain guitars while practically non-existent on others.
If you have a neodymium magnet, you can experiment with inducing beating by holding the magnet close to the string. If you put it near the ends, you can hear higher harmonics ring out, like a sitar sound, as you move towards the center of the string, you get beating sounds. It gives you an idea of what the pickup's own magnetic pull can or can't do. Also as mentioned above, it's possible for the string itself to have some sort of imperfection that makes it asymmetrical, but I've only ever witnessed that with nylon strings, nylon is a much softer than steel and seems more prone to damage or manufacturing flaws. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 30, 2022 10:14:31 GMT -5
And i didn't see this response!
The poster in the Strat-talk thread was very thorough and eliminated practically every variable. It didn't seem to be mechanical in his case.
What confuses me still is that, if it is purely caused by magnetic pull, then why is the beating emphasized on certain guitars while practically non-existent on others.
If you have a neodymium magnet, you can experiment with inducing beating by holding the magnet close to the string. If you put it near the ends, you can hear higher harmonics ring out, like a sitar sound, as you move towards the center of the string, you get beating sounds. It gives you an idea of what the pickup's own magnetic pull can or can't do. Also as mentioned above, it's possible for the string itself to have some sort of imperfection that makes it asymmetrical, but I've only ever witnessed that with nylon strings, nylon is a much softer than steel and seems more prone to damage or manufacturing flaws.
Were you at any point able to induce the beating in the humbucker tests with the Tele and LP (just by raising pickup height and not with the neodymium magnet, just to be clear)? Did you ever go closer than 2mm? And just to clarify, the measurement of the distance between top of polepiece and the bottom of the string was taken while fretting at the last fret, correct?
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Post by antigua on Aug 31, 2022 0:00:04 GMT -5
If you have a neodymium magnet, you can experiment with inducing beating by holding the magnet close to the string. If you put it near the ends, you can hear higher harmonics ring out, like a sitar sound, as you move towards the center of the string, you get beating sounds. It gives you an idea of what the pickup's own magnetic pull can or can't do. Also as mentioned above, it's possible for the string itself to have some sort of imperfection that makes it asymmetrical, but I've only ever witnessed that with nylon strings, nylon is a much softer than steel and seems more prone to damage or manufacturing flaws.
Were you at any point able to induce the beating in the humbucker tests with the Tele and LP (just by raising pickup height and not with the neodymium magnet, just to be clear)? Did you ever go closer than 2mm? And just to clarify, the measurement of the distance between top of polepiece and the bottom of the string was taken while fretting at the last fret, correct?
I don't think I ever heard beating with a humbucker, I've only ever heard with with AlNiCo 5 Strat pickups. It measures 1050G at the top of the pole piece, only a small number of other pickups on the market come close to that. The strings were fretted at the 12th fret with a capo. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Aug 31, 2022 8:47:36 GMT -5
Were you at any point able to induce the beating in the humbucker tests with the Tele and LP (just by raising pickup height and not with the neodymium magnet, just to be clear)? Did you ever go closer than 2mm? And just to clarify, the measurement of the distance between top of polepiece and the bottom of the string was taken while fretting at the last fret, correct?
I don't think I ever heard beating with a humbucker, I've only ever heard with with AlNiCo 5 Strat pickups. It measures 1050G at the top of the pole piece, only a small number of other pickups on the market come close to that. The strings were fretted at the 12th fret with a capo.
Curiouser and curiouser! All the pickups on my guitar that produces the beating are ceramic magnet humbuckers, and only as i mentioned on certain notes on the 3rd string (from 11th to 17th fret) and on 2 or 3 notes on the 2nd string. The beating is heard on the bridge pickup only, when running through amp distortion. Placing an overdrive in front of the amp stops the beating mostly, which i would attribute to the compression from the pedal.
To further confuse things, when i run the same guitar through software plugin amps -- distorted without any overdrive pedal in front -- the beating is there but almost non-existent.
I really want to investigate this further but i have no idea where to start and the problem seems hard to reproduce because as i've mentioned not all guitars seem to have it.
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Post by antigua on Aug 31, 2022 13:23:15 GMT -5
I don't think I ever heard beating with a humbucker, I've only ever heard with with AlNiCo 5 Strat pickups. It measures 1050G at the top of the pole piece, only a small number of other pickups on the market come close to that. The strings were fretted at the 12th fret with a capo.
Curiouser and curiouser! All the pickups on my guitar that produces the beating are ceramic magnet humbuckers, and only as i mentioned on certain notes on the 3rd string (from 11th to 17th fret) and on 2 or 3 notes on the 2nd string. The beating is heard on the bridge pickup only, when running through amp distortion. Placing an overdrive in front of the amp stops the beating mostly, which i would attribute to the compression from the pedal.
To further confuse things, when i run the same guitar through software plugin amps -- distorted without any overdrive pedal in front -- the beating is there but almost non-existent.
I really want to investigate this further but i have no idea where to start and the problem seems hard to reproduce because as i've mentioned not all guitars seem to have it.
If the pickups are causing beating, you will hear it even if the guitar is unplugged. You also have to be able to hear it plucking a single string at a time, if you are plucking several strings, they will beat against the harmonics of each other, which is what makes guitars and pianos so rich sounding. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Sept 1, 2022 9:39:45 GMT -5
If the pickups are causing beating, you will hear it even if the guitar is unplugged.
This never occurred to me before. Great point! Because the magnetic pull is actually interfering with the strings' vibration! Now i'm starting to think the beating i'm hearing is actually a kind of physical resonance between the strings and some other part of the guitar.
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Post by antigua on Sept 1, 2022 14:29:48 GMT -5
If the pickups are causing beating, you will hear it even if the guitar is unplugged.
This never occurred to me before. Great point! Because the magnetic pull is actually interfering with the strings' vibration! Now i'm starting to think the beating i'm hearing is actually a kind of physical resonance between the strings and some other part of the guitar.
You should hear any physical beating of a particular string by ear. I have no theory as to why you'd only hear beating through the pickups, or with distortion, maybe something having to do with asymmetrical slipping. I've never had such a thing happen. |
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yanyan
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Post by yanyan on Sept 2, 2022 4:43:55 GMT -5
This never occurred to me before. Great point! Because the magnetic pull is actually interfering with the strings' vibration! Now i'm starting to think the beating i'm hearing is actually a kind of physical resonance between the strings and some other part of the guitar.
You should hear any physical beating of a particular string by ear. I have no theory as to why you'd only hear beating through the pickups, or with distortion, maybe something having to do with asymmetrical slipping. I've never had such a thing happen.
I'll concede that it's likely that i just can't hear the beating unplugged or through a clean channel.
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nuke
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Post by nuke on Feb 21, 2024 19:28:51 GMT -5
Interesting thread. I have 1960 Les Paul reissue with Custombucker 3 pickups. These have the alnico 3 magnets. Very low magnet strength.
I took it out of the box, the factory setup was interesting. String height was quite low, and the string to pickup clearance was also very low as well.
I like a little higher string action and did a pretty standard setup for relief, action and pickup clearance at modern factory settings.
The action is better for me, but the tone got a little less sparkly with the increased clearance.
This discussion is interesting, as humbuckers aren’t as susceptible to wolf tones, and I suspect with the low magnetic energy, the Custombucker 3 can go really close.
I wondered whether the factory setup was as intentional or just sloppy. You always wonder about Gibson QC. They can do great on some stuff, and totally boff it up on other stuff, even at the Custom shop level.
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